When you visit your doctor to talk about your uncontrolled asthma symptoms, it is a good idea to bring with you a list of your concerns. A good way to do this is to chart your symptoms leading up to your appointment and then bring this information with you when you go. This can include your daily peak flow measures, information about when you experienced symptoms and how serious they were, whether your symptoms seem to be improving or worsening over time, how often you had to use your rescue inhaler, how much you have had to limit your daily activities or exercise, what triggers seem to be related to your symptoms, and information on any asthma attacks you may have had.

Once you have provided this information to your doctor, you can talk to him or her about making changes to your asthma action plan. If you don’t already know, you can ask what types of medications you are currently prescribed. You can ask the doctor what the available options are for changing your medications: does he or she think you should increase the dose or frequency of your current medications, should you switch to a similar medication within the same class (e.g. a different corticosteroid or a different LABA in conjunction with a corticosteroid), or should you try something different entirely (e.g. adding an LABA to your existing corticosteroid prescription or switching to medication that contains both a corticosteroid and a LABA)? You can ask the doctor to explain why they are recommending those particular changes and not something else.

You can also ask the doctor about changing other aspects of your asthma control plan: should you be doing more to avoid factors that worsen your asthma? Are you doing enough to track your level of asthma control? Is it OK for you to increase the dose of one of your newly prescribed medications temporarily when your symptoms worsen? Finally, you can ask what the next step should be if the current changes you are making to your asthma action plan fail to bring your asthma symptoms under control.